Australia You're Standing In It
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Australia You're Standing In It was an Australian sketch comedy
Sketch comedy
A sketch comedy consists of a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches," commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as broadcasting...

 series produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

, first screened in 1983 with a second series made in 1984.

Cast

The cast included Rod Quantock
Rod Quantock
Rod Quantock is an Australian stand-up comedian and writer. He is known for his peculiar style of stand-up comedy, which is often politically driven, as well as being the face of bed retailer Capt'n Snooze for many years...

, Steve Blackburn, Mary Kenneally, Geoff Brooks, Sue Ingleton, Evelyn Krape, Peter Browne
Peter Browne
Peter Browne , Irish divine and bishop of Cork and Ross, was born in County Dublin, not long after the Restoration.He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1682, and after ten years' residence obtained a fellowship...

, Tim Robertson.

Format

Australia You're Standing In It featured many recurring sketches and characters that parodied well known personalities, pop stars, music videos, television programs and advertisements of the day, or simply sent-up well-known social situations. These included:
  • Two pretentious society matrons (Ingleton and Kenneally) and a third (Krape) who could never quite make the grade much to the delight of the other two who mocked her. Catchphrase: "Helloo Daaaahlings!"
  • The Dodgy Brothers (Blackburn and Brooks), two badly dressed and dim businessmen who appeared in the low-budget and badly-produced television advertisements selling their dodgy products. Partly a parody of the then ubiquitous advertisements for the Saba furniture warehouse, and other cut-rate advertisements of its ilk.
  • "Brainspace", a new-age segment presented by Tim and Debbie (Kenneally and Blackburn), two trendy university students whose convoluted and pretentious talk was a smokescreen for their ignorance. Their main catchphrase was "Amaaazing!"
  • Mock advertisements for fictional product "Chunky Custard". Most of these were parodies of familiar contemporary advertisements for real products, mimicking current commercials for such products as Big M or Four'N Twenty Pie
    Four'N Twenty Pie
    The Four'N Twenty Meat Pie was invented in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia by LT. McClure in 1947. The meat pie is a very popular food product in Australia as strong demand for the pie saw production grow from 50 pies per day to 50,000 pies per hour in between the years of 1948 to 1998.McClure took a...

    s. Halfway through the second series Chunky Custard was phased out and replaced by "Hot Yak Fat", which came in a can resembling a beer can. Viewers were exhorted to "crack a Fat today" (a play on a common, vulgar Australian slang term for a penile erection
    Erection
    Penile erection is a physiological phenomenon where the penis becomes enlarged and firm. Penile erection is the result of a complex interaction of psychological, neural, vascular and endocrine factors, and is usually, though not exclusively, associated with sexual arousal...

    ).
  • Many parodies of then-popular songs and music videos, including Mary Kenneally as Bonnie Tyler in "Total Eclipse of the Brain".
  • Bruce Rump (Brooks), a parody of Bruce Ruxton
    Bruce Ruxton
    Bruce Caryle Ruxton AM, OBE is an Australian ex-serviceman and former President of the Victorian Returned and Services League.-Early life:Ruxton grew up in Kew, Victoria...

    . Rump always ended his skits with "And that's why we should keep the bloody flag the same, now clear out!"
  • Rod Quantock in traditional stand-up routines in which he would address the audience directly. In one episode he attempted to put Victorian viewers to sleep by hypnotizing them with an Australian Football League
    Australian Football League
    The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...

     football.
  • "Fair Cops", a parody of Cop Shop
    Cop Shop
    Cop Shop was an Australian police drama television series produced by Crawford Productions that revolved around the everyday operations of both the uniformed police officers and the plain-clothes detectives of the fictional Riverside Police Station....

    .
  • The Catalogue Collectors, a pair of scarf-clad Melburnians who lived in a caravan next to Port Phillip
    Port Phillip
    Port Phillip Port Phillip Port Phillip (also commonly referred to as Port Phillip Bay or (locally) just The Bay, is a large bay in southern Victoria, Australia; it is the location of Melbourne. Geographically, the bay covers and the shore stretches roughly . Although it is extremely shallow for...

     and collected catalogues. Catchphrase: "Home is where the front door is."

Spinoffs

  • For a short time Tim and Debbie presented Reel To Real on the ABC, in which the pair presented old B-movie
    B-movie
    A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

    s (e.g. The Boy with Green Hair
    The Boy with Green Hair
    The Boy with Green Hair is a 1948 American comedy-drama film directed by Joseph Losey. It stars Dean Stockwell as Peter, a young war orphan who is subject to ridicule after he awakens one morning to find his hair mysteriously turned green...

    ) and proceeded to interrupt, deconstruct, and generally mock them in voice-over as the movie screened.
  • A long-playing record of most of the Tim and Debbie sketches was released under the title Brainspace, Vol. II.
  • The Dodgy Brothers (again portrayed by Blackburn and Brooks) and Bruce Rump (Brooks) were resurrected in the later Fast Forward.
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